My Testimony
By Bert Maddawat
When I left the Philippines for Australia straight away after the Keley-i New Testament dedication in 1980, I could only count a few evangelical Christian followers in Asipulo, Ifugao. So I felt a bit down. But on succeeding visits, the changes I saw were just short of being miraculous!
There were more evangelical Christian followers, churches were established, and Sunday schools and Bible studies were being conducted. Shamans attended Christian services and gatherings among the Christians.
Pagan rituals and sacrificial offerings of animals for appeasement had abated if not ceased. The sound of gongs and chants, and dances for ritualistic purposes were now mainly for entertainment on joyful occasions and celebrations. Ritual chants turned into prayer, praise and worship with hymns.
On one Easter Sunday service in the Dugyo church, I was asked to give a talk and as I saw the overflowing crowd in and outside the church, I was in tears in front of them. It just hit me right there and then. The major changes that had taken place since the time I left these mountainous villages were awesome. It was an amazing feeling of joy!
But all this started because God had plans for all of us. So He sent missionaries all over the world like Mr. & Mrs. Richard and Lou Hohulin who spent their lives helping us through the translation of the English Bible into Keley-i. So now we are able to understand God’s Word in our own dialect.
On a personal note, I give thanks to God for what I am today and what I will be in the future. To me, God’s intervention in my life is evident. Through Christian missions that came into my village, I was put on the path to a Christian way of life. It was through a Catholic mission that I was plucked from the shackles of the pagan belief system of my parents in which my father was one of the shamans.
Through this mission I was introduced to Christianity and I was also helped to finish high school. Without their intervention, I would probably have been like my father, a shaman, if I’d stayed in the village.
God’s hand on me did not end there, because in the ensuing years, He led me to SIL, another Christian mission, where I spent many years working with Mr. & Mrs. Richard and Lou Hohulin with Bible translation.
Working with Bible translation has made me stronger in my Christian walk by learning God’s empowering words of love, forgiveness, faithfulness and obedience to Him.
Although my father died in 1995, I was told that he started attending Christian services as well as some Christian gatherings, so I give it to God to judge him.
God’s love and forgiveness were so evident when my family here in Australia was asked to attend my 92 year old mother’s last ritual celebration of life called HENGA in the Keley-i dialect.
He forgave my mother from her previous intransigence toward Christianity. Before I left my village in Antipolo for Australia, I told my parents about how to follow Christian ways of living, but their answer was that they were born into their pagan religion and would live by it until they die.
But to our surprise on our last visit in October 2014, on the day they were to perform the pagan ritual celebration of life called HENGA, my mother asked the same Christian pastor who had baptized her a short time before to officiate, instead of asking a pagan shaman to do so at the supposed pagan ritual celebration of life.
My wife, Jenelle, and I, with our Australian family who went along with us, including some of our grandchildren, were in tears as we looked on my mother enjoying the celebration of life in a Christian way with praise and worship of hymns echoing in the house of my brother, rather than pagan chants and gongs.
Prayers and testimonies to God’s working in people’s lives were also shared by others. God does change lives and He is still doing it in the villages where I came from.
Another one of God’s marks in my life was providing me with a Christian wife who works hard for the livelihood of our family.
It is hard to believe that a boy, who lived a life of the poorest of the poor in a poor village of a third world country, would ever live in the city of a developed country.
But God is all knowing, so he knew that one day I could be of help again to the Hohulins in the Old Testament translation from English to my Keley-i dialect just as I worked with them in the New Testament translation almost 30 years ago in the Philippines. And so He sent a beautiful girl from Australia who was volunteering with the SIL mission in the Philippines, to meet me.
Three years later, we were married and settled in Australia. Twenty years or so later, God indeed called me back to help the Hohulins again with the translation of the Old Testament.
At that time, the job I was doing was no longer needed so I resigned from my job. And so I began looking for what I was to do next in my life. We had always received the Hohulins’ newsletters and saw their prayer request for someone to help them in translating the Old Testament into the Keley-i dialect.
Over time, we both began to feel God saying that I should help them again. So we rang them in America one day to talk about it. This resulted in my wife becoming our breadwinner so I could be of help to them in the translation of the Bible into Keley-i again.
And, even though I was here in Australia, by way of modern technology, we were able to work together on the project with some of the folks in the Philippines and the Hohulins in the USA. Ten years later the entire Bible was finished and dedicated to God in 2009.
The Dedication of the Antipolo Ifugao Bible was a moment of joy for my wife and me, and for some of our Australian friends, to attend the momentous occasion, and to meet up with the Hohulins and with everyone else who had been involved in the translation project.
I was so happy to see these friends again who I was not able to see face to face since our last Bible translation workshop in the Philippines sometime in 2001.
God is almighty indeed, for He makes things that are humanly impossible to be possible!
In conclusion, I am very thankful to God for my wife who continues to be our sole breadwinner and so I was able to help the Hohulins in the translation of the Word of God from English to Keley-i. She also encourages me to continue with my volunteer service to my fellow Antipolo people, by helping the Hohulins again in the making of the English- Keley-i dictionary. One day, hopefully this dictionary will be of help to those people who are interested in wanting to learn meanings of English to Keley-i and vice versa.
May God be praised for what He has helped me to achieve during my life for the advancement of His Kingdom and for the spread of the Good News among my fellow Ifugao people concerning His love for us as revealed through His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
